Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"Actually I didn't believe in the whole systems of care theory or concept early on because
I was so, I guess, cyloed and in my own world of juvenile probation. I thought that the
agencies had their youth end up in our juvenile justice system just because they weren't doing
their job. And I had to pick up the pieces for some things that they didn't do. And I,
you know, felt that it was just, you know, 'Here we go again. Here's juvenile probation
here to save the day all over again.' But then as we got this grant and began to work
through this grant I began to understand a little bit more about other systems, and understand
their language and understand their procedures and their mandates and what they could and
could not do. You know I began to still fight a little bit. My whole thing was how can we
share information with each other? It's confidential. How can I bring a therapist? What do you mean
a custodian can reach a kid better than a therapist? That can't be. They're a custodian.
Little did I know that it could be anyone that could reach that child. Little did I
know that it didn't take someone that had 18 years of textbook knowledge to reach a
child. It could have been the school nurse, the cafeteria lady that took time to sit with
that child in the cafeteria when no one wanted to talk to her that made that impact so I
didn't really realize until I became involved in the whole System of Care. And then I had
to learn and navigate through the systems myself, and I did that as a quote on quote
professional. And I found it very difficult. We came together as a community. As we came
together as a community I realized that this is what it takes to get things done; for us
to understand the issue, understand the problem, but understand how we come to a common solution
within the systems. And once we began to have that conversation, began to do the cross training,
began to listen to the families of the youth, I began to see things change. I mean at this
point I am so blessed to live in my community of El Paso where I have probably every child
social service agency or direct line on my cell phone to their office, to personal cell
phones where we can act immediately on a situation that may have come through our doors. Let's
make it a constant for generations to come. This is how we treat our children and families
in El Paso, in Texas and hopefully the United States.